Soft drinks company Coca-Cola’s first alcoholic drink, a fizzy, lemon-flavoured drink called Lemon-Do, went on sale in Japan on Monday, BBC reported. The drink, which has 3% to 8% alcohol content, is available in the southern Kyushu region of Japan.
The product, the first of its kind in the 125-year history of the company, is similar to Japan’s popular “Chuhai” drinks – a canned, sparkling flavoured drink that contains a local spirit known as shochu. They come in a range of flavours, including grape, strawberry and kiwi.
Major Japanese companies such as Suntory, Kirin and Asahi already dominate the limited flavoured alcoholic drinks market. The Japanese market has hundreds of flavours of Chuhai and its sale has fluctuated between 5% and 25% since 2013, according to the Japanese drinks group Suntory.
However, Coca-Cola said there are no plans to take the new drink outside Japan. “This is a pilot project in the region, which has a sizable market,” Masaki Iida, Coca-Cola spokesperson, told AFP.
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